World Trade Organization Is No Friend to U.S.

For many years, opponents of the World Trade Organization have predicted that this foreign bureaucracy would massively interfere with U.S. sovereignty. This new ruling is crazy, unjust and impertinent, but without a lot of public protest, it looks unlikely that our "free trade" president or Congress will do anything to protect U.S. citizens from the World Trade Organization.

How is a foreign tribunal in Geneva able to put the United States in such a box? It's because the internationalist free-trade lobby cooked up a sleazy deal to force the World Trade Organization on Americans in 1994 during the week after Thanksgiving, when Americans were preoccupied with Christmas shopping and festivities.

The deal to lock the United States into World Trade Organization consisted of three parts. First, the 14-page World Trade Organization agreement was surreptitiously added, without debate or publicity, to the 22,000-page revision of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, implementing legislation, and was voted on under "fast track" rules that allowed no amendments or changes, severely limited debate, and forbade any filibuster.

Second, the Treaty Clause in the U.S. Constitution for ratification of treaties was ignored, and World Trade Organization was declared passed by Congress as a non-treaty. Third, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization agreement was passed in the December lame-duck session with the votes of dozens of Congressmen who were looking for lucrative jobs representing foreign interests because they had already been defeated in the Republican landslide of November 1994.

The World Trade Organization is not "free trade" at all, but is a supra-national body in Geneva that sets, manages and enforces World Trade Organization-made rules to govern global trade. The World Trade Organization includes a one country-one vote legislature of 151 nations (the United States has the same one vote as Cuba), an unelected multinational bureaucracy, and a Dispute Settlement Board that deliberates and votes in secret and whose decisions cannot be appealed or vetoed.

The World Trade Organization is a direct attack on U.S. sovereignty because it claims it can force any nation to change its laws to comply with World Trade Organization rulings. Article XVI, paragraph 4, states: "Each Member shall ensure the conformity of its laws, regulations, and administrative procedures with its obligations." The World Trade Organization has the final say about whether U.S. laws meet World Trade Organization requirements.

In this presidential season, the World Trade Organization should make easy target practice for any candidate to speak up and defend U.S. sovereignty against globalists who, under the mantra of "free trade," willingly allow the World Trade Organization to say which laws the U.S. may or may not adopt.